Thanksgiving is supposed to be about gratitude but for many people seeing family can heighten tension and nerves (and seeing them on Zoom doesn’t necessarily make it any easier).

It’s easy to fall back into the patterns of your childhood and find yourself arguing with siblings or parents.

Here are a few helpful tips to respond thoughtfully, ease stress, and deescalate arguments.

1. ACKNOWLEDGE AND VALIDATE

When you feel your blood pressure rising and your voice getting louder, try this technique:

Stop the conversation and say:

“I want to take a moment and acknowledge we have different viewpoints. It makes sense you feel that way.”  

Acknowledging other people's reality is the quickest way to end an argument.

Note, this doesn’t mean you agree, but it does give each person permission to feel the way they feel.

Mastering this technique can be the difference between a holiday meal filled with arguing and virtual food fights, or friendly dinner conversation.

2. ADVANCE PREPARE FOR THE DREADED QUESTION

Your mother, aunt, grandparent is not asking you those questions to torture you, despite what it might feel like. They care about you, and are interested in what you’re doing, and unfortunately that sometimes shows up in the form of interrogating questions.

How’s your job search?

How’s business?

How’s single life?

Answer with something simple like “It continues” and pivot by asking them a question.

3. REFRAME THE SITUATION

If you go in planning to have a bad time, chances are you’ll have a bad time. So if you’re feeling uneasy about Thanksgiving dinner, how can you reframe the situation?

Is it an exercise to practice tolerance, use your best listening skills, fancy dinner and drinks?

4. USE I STATEMENTS:

When you feel yourself getting defensive, try to steer clear of “You’re stressing me out" or  "You’re pissing me off” and use this formula:

I feel ________________(emotion) when you __________________ (do this action).

It removes some of the finger pointing and allows everyone to take responsibility for how they’re feeling.

Want more tips on how to stop arguing with your family and work team? Grab 4 Skills to Master Tricky Conversations.

Public speaking is scary and even the most experienced speakers get nervous. The good news is public speaking is not a god-given talent.

It’s a skill that can be learned, just like softball or knitting.

The good news is you don't have to be a natural performer BUT you do have to practice.

The best way to get comfortable speaking in front of a group is to practice in front of a group. If that's more terrifying than you can imagine, here are a few easy tips to practice at home.

 

1. PRACTICE YOUR PRESENTATION IN THE MIRROR.

This is a great way to get immediate feedback and get used to seeing yourself speak. That might feel awkward but that's the point because once you get comfortable watching yourself, it will feel less scary when you stand up in front of other people.

 

2. PRACTICE YOUR PRESENTATION FOR A DOG.

Dogs make very understanding audiences. Check out this New York Times article: How to Give a Better Speech: Talk to a Dog

 

3. PRACTICE STANDING AND SPEAKING IN OPEN, POWERFUL POSTURES.

Watch Amy Cuddy's TED talk on presence Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are and try out power poses.

Want more tips? Download 7 Practice Strategies to Rock Your Presentation. They’re free!

My parents divorced when I was young and my sister and I spent our summers and school vacations in West Virginia at what I affectionately call Camp Dad, compulsory cooking and sports camp.

In the evenings, we walked to the public tennis courts a few clocks away. After tennis, we came home and played Boggle.

Boggle with Bob Schwarz was no ordinary game of Boggle.

We were allowed to use words we couldn’t define with one caveat – we had to look them up in the big blue Webster dictionary (yes, there were once printed dictionaries in a land far, far away).

My dad would take notes and quiz us at the next day’s Boggle game, not my favorite part of the game but it built character as he would say. And he credits our high SAT verbal scores to years of playing Boggle.

Starting at age 8, as part of the custody agreement, my sister and I had to write weekly letters to my dad and send school assignments from our classes.

We would send graded papers and he would send them back, with comments.

More than once, an A+ paper from a teacher returned from dad with a mess of red ink.

My dad was a journalist at the Charleston Gazette for 25 years and I credit him with my writing skills, love of language, and zealous proofreading tendencies.

I recently read Brené Brown's books Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection and was struck by her writing on perfectionism. She defines perfectionism as:

“A self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: “If I look perfect, live perfectly, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”

That hit me like a ton of bricks. While I identified as being a perfectionist, I never identified perfectionism as being so debilitating.

Stepping back from perfectionist tendencies after a lifetime of practicing them is hard.

Sharing my imperfect self in a very public way is scary. So as I hit publish on this blog post with some trepidation, I am reminding myself (and Dad if you’re reading), there are worse things than typos.